This Week's Best Concerts

Concluding our series on Stones scandals prior to the band’s appearance on Sunday at NRG Stadium, today we consider the question, “So did Keith Richards really snort some of his father’s ashes?” The short answer? Could be.

In 2007, Richards told a reporter from England’s New Musical Express, “I snorted my father. He was cremated, and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared, he didn’t give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.” Was Keith just jacking with a gullible music scribe, or did he, in fact, rail out his late father Bert and honk up a fat line? A couple of days after the story broke, Richards denied it, but was that because the general reaction was one of revulsion?

Richards said that, following a head injury sustained when he reportedly fell out of a tree in Fiji (er, OK, Keith) the previous year, indulging in the Devil’s dandruff would be “suicide.” There seems to be little doubt that he did sustain some sort of brain lesion, nor does anyone question that cocaine might well have exacerbated any problems that Richards was having in the cranium department. But the line about still being alive? It makes me wonder. (Oh, sorry, that’s a different classic rock band from England.) I’ll lay 3 to 2 odds that a smidgen of old Bert did come to rest in his progeny’s nasal cavity. Hey, Keith has put worse things up his nose!

Ticket Alert

Las Vegas popsters Imagine Dragons will be touring this fall in support of the band’s forthcoming album, Loom. At this point, it appears that “loom” refers to “appearing in an exaggeratedly large form” rather than “a device used for weaving,” but the record won’t be released until June 28. The band’s Houston concert is set for Friday, September 6, at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. The presales are up now, and the general sale is scheduled for Friday.

Glass Animals is another pop-ish band that has a new album coming out soon and a tour on tap. Though in this case, the title of their album, I Love You So F***ing Much (their asterisks, not ours), doesn’t provide much in the way of ambiguity. Tickets for the band’s show at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Saturday, September 21, are selling at a brisk pace, so if you want to go to the concert really f***ing bad, you better get on the stick.

Concerts This Week

Kilgore’s own Ally Venable is only 25, but the blues guitarist has been in the music business for over a dozen years. Her resume is impressive and includes appearances with Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa, five successful albums and the number two spot on Guitar World’s “15 Young Guns Making the Gibson Les Paul Cool Again.” Venable will at the Dosey Doe Big Barn on Saturday.

Sure, everybody loves Motown, but what about Philly Soul? The Spinners, The O’Jays, The Stylistics. “I’ll Be Around,” “Love Train,” “I’m Stone in Love with You.” That’s the stuff right there. The Community Music Center of Houston will present the fourth annual edition of its “Philly Soul Sound” concert series on Saturday at Miller Outdoor Theatre. As usual, this show at Miller is free, and you can get tickets for the seated area of the venue between 10 a.m. and noon on performance dates via the Miller website. Of course, there’s always the hill, if you need a little room to shake your groove thang.

The Rolling Stones’ U.S. tour will begin on Sunday at NRG Stadium, and this is tremendously exciting. The band will unveil a new stage set here in Houston and present the live debuts of a number of songs from their recent album Hackney Diamonds, so the eyes of the Stones world will be laser-focused on H-Town this week. Reports from Los Angeles rehearsals indicate that the Stones have run through over 50 songs (including some serious rarities), so we will see which tunes make the final cut. I’m pulling for “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and “Monkey Man.” Maybe “Faraway Eyes.” Tickets are still available, so if you have never seen the Stones, consider that this might well be, as they say, “The Last Time.”

This is the era of Bad Bunny. The Puerto Rican rapper and singer has topped Spotify streaming charts in a number of categories for the past several years, attained the number one slot on the Billboard 200 with El Último Tour Del Mundo (the first all-Spanish album to hit that position) and in May, he will serve as one of the hosts for the Met Gala in New York. Oh, and he has also won titles as a WWE wrestler. The Bunny will play Toyota Center for two nights, Tuesday, April 30, and Wednesday, May 1, and it promises to be quite the fiesta. ‘Cause Knowledge is Power: Bad Bunny’s name comes from an incident during his childhood when he was forced to wear a bunny costume and was majorly P.O.’ed about it.